⁰¹⁰ | The Blackness of the Stone

🎧 Sacrifice (Eat Me Up) by Enhypen

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Clenching her jaw, she cursed, "She makes me want to kill her."

"Now you get me!" Lisa Thalassa yelled and many of the Faes near her laughed, as if she was amazing, as if she wouldn't bully them in the first opportunity she got. Fools.

"You don't get to decide who die and who doesn't," he countered. "And you, low born reckless fae, were not invited in this conversation," he hissed at Lisa without even looking at her. "Instead of fighting a 22-year-old kid who looks 11, why don't you get your shit together and go back to the Choosing first test?"

Before I could curse him for saying that about me, Greg held my arm and I turned to him, "Please, don't say anything, he's dangerous, can't you feel it? I know you're crazy strong, but he's putting the headmaster in her place, we don't even know who he is, and he seem to have authority over everyone in here. I don't think you should pick a fight with him," he said it all nearly breathing, as if scared of anyone hearing him.

Fuck, but he is so infuriating. "Okay, sorry, I have an edge."

He gasped under his breath, "That much is obvious, Davina."

Swallowing, I felt my skin heating up, and I turned my eyes up, not to them, but to my stone. Biting my lips anxiously, I turned to look at them again. There is no way I won't get black. I know exactly who are the last two people who got black, exactly the two I took my looks after, my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents Orpheus Wintergrave and Lilith-Melantha Hallownight, both touched by the God of Death at birth, mates.

The first one was the firstborn Wintergrave, the very founder of the Wintergrave Imperial Academy as we know, twelve millennials before the Choosing was established, the very Conqueror of the Empire, born Silas Witherbury, taking over the Wintergrave after he became the first Emperor, who was also, somehow, touched by the God of Death. So, in a way, the blackness of the stone is related to this damning God.

I am linked to him, so it only makes sense that I get black.

"Back to what I was saying before being interrupted, the stones are impossible to be tempered with, it'll solely show how deep your magic goes in a way we cannot measure easily," she exclaimed, looking anywhere but close to where I am, and I couldn't help grinning to that. "The stones were discovered by the Conqueror of the Empire, Silas Witherbury, on a mine he discovered deep underneath the land where he built the Imperial Palace. As the founder of the Wintergrave Imperial Academy, he used them as a way to decided who was going to be accepted into it."

"Silas Wintergrave," I whispered to Gregory. "He took that name the second he conquered the Empire, before building the palace or thinking of founding the Academy, even before he found the stones," my mom used to tell me the tale, as she was the heir of the Wintergrave bloodline.

"How did he die?" He asked me under his breath.

That's the thing, he didn't, he just vanished. "I don't know."

"You think he was murdered?"

"Ask me again after we become students in this hell," I winked.

He smiled shyly, "I hope so."

"Close your eyes," she told all of us, "unite your palms at the height of your core, and focus on it and only on it. The stone will do the rest."

"Good luck," Greg whispered to me.

I don't need luck. "You too," but I replied kindly.

Closing my eyes, I did what my mom taught me all those years back and united my hands at the height of my central core of magic, each Fae, when learning the basics of managing the magic in their core, pick a point that will become their central core, and I picked my heart. Focusing on it, I united my hands a bit above my heart, leaving just my middle and my index finger up, not up in the sky but pointing down, down to my heart in a way I will stay grounded when my magic flows through me. Then I focused all of my magic to circulate to where my fingers were pointing, to my main core, the core I chose.

In the human realm this is called the cultivation type of meditation, most of them don't practice, however, many humans in the East of the Asian continent do, and that's why they are the most full of wisdom in there. They may not be able to cultivate their magic, but they know how to cultivate their energy, how to move it for a better use. It's a similar idea to the one the Wintergrave had on the cultivation of magic in a higher potential.

All you need is the ability to clear up your mind of any thoughts or impurities for when you cultivate, and the basic knowledge of directing the magic in your body in a way it'll help you cultivate grounded, in a way that will help you cultivate above the ground, or in a way it'll expand and send everyone around you flying away.

If you do it with your index and your middle finger up the sky, you will float, if you do it with them up to the ground, you will stay grounded, if you do it with all your fingers up as if you were praying, it will get messy. Of course, not if you have the least control knowledge, then it'll leak away but it won't affect anyone around you, but if you don't, it could leak out of your body and expand to affect the people in your surroundings.

Again, the concept of only using the index and the middle finger to direct your magic was made by my family and was kept between us and the ones tasked with protecting us, such as personal Imperial Knights. So, if anyone see me doing this and recognizes, I can just say my 'Knight father' taught me. In a way it isn't wrong, my father was the Emperor and the very Commander of the army, so in a way, he was a Knight, it's all a matter of how you perceive things, or of how you tell them.

Everyone else relies on the common way of reaching their core.

But given how my body is weak, I couldn't handled controlling all of my magic, and though I kept a leash on it, it forced me to my knees and as I felt to it, I concentrated in not losing control, if I do, I'll hurt innocents and I don't want to hurt anyone who doesn't deserve it. I felt a pressure in my heart, like a pinch, and it hurt like never before, but I didn't scream, I didn't make a sound, I didn't even wince and neither did I allow myself to think of the pain, even when I felt my eyes, ears, and nose bleeding. Any diversion of thoughts could make my control slip, and I can't allow that.

I felt numb to the outside world, all I could feel was the magic into me, angry, ravenous, and craving to go berserk, to make those who tried to tame it with the anti-magic shackles pay for it. Pay for repressing me, for trying to force me to obey them, even though an Empress obeys no one but herself, and I was born to rule, I was born to rule over the Fae, and my very soul knows that. But it fought against my leash, and the more I resisted the more it hurt.

When I felt my feet digging into the ground, I switched my fingers up, trying to avoid it from crushing me on the ground, but I lost my footing and it took me up, off the floor. I felt a part of me starting to panic, but I did my best not to let that creep into me all over, because it would make it worse.

"…Open your eyes!" A voice ordered.

I was too lost in my mind to recognize it, but even when I felt my eyelids opening, I felt blind, I couldn't see anything. Then I felt big heavy hands pressing onto my shoulders and pushing me down, but I still couldn't hear anything. My feet touched the ground again, but they fought as if they wanted to stay in the air.

"Well, shit," the voice cursed. "Evacuate everyone from this place if you don't want them to be dead meat, Dove, because this rogue one is all but hanging by a thread, she won't be able to control her magic for too long. And when she snaps, so will the coliseum," I think he screamed.

The voice sounded far away, so I couldn't make it very clearly, and a cry left my lips, my knees weakening again, but when I thought I would fall down to my knees again, he kept me standing, holding me still by my shoulders. I heard curses, orders, and screams from far away but I couldn't make up any of it, all I could hear was the sound of my heart beating angrily against my chest. A worse pinch in my core spread an unbearable pain all over me and a horrific scream left my throat, which only made blood roll out of my lips too.

"Faster, you crone!" The voice screamed exasperated. "Fuck, that's what happens when they use those damn anti-magic shackles to block those kids magic, it fucks them up. Get it together, Davina."

Another scream left my throat, a scream of pain, and my knees tried to give you again, but the male holding me didn't let it happen. The pain of it reverberated through my bones, and for a second I thought they would all shatter. I tried not to think about it, I tried to ignore the pain, but it was too hard when I felt it trying to shred me from the inside out.

"Finally, fuck," he cursed over something. "Don't hold back."

It was all the voice told me, before his grounding touch and his very presence vanished away from me. And as soon as he stopped holding me, I crumbled on the ground, and when I tried to think of something else go take my mind off the pain, my mind brought me back to the night I lost every damn thing I had in my life, my family. It fucked me up.

My control slipped entirely and an agonizing, glass shattering cry left my throat as my magic exploded out of me, craving for destruction and when the cry turned into an endless scream, I rose off the ground, taking over everything around me. I felt my magic taking something enormously heavy off the ground, reaping it from it, bringing it up with me, desperate to tear something down of its existence.

I tried holding onto it, but it was meaningless.

My magic shattered it all down to particles, my arms breaking on the motion, as my magic controlled me. And for a minute, I felt everything freezing, the very flow of time, until it was gone and all that was holding me together came undone. My consciousness leaving me.

In a second I was up there.

Then I was falling.